Republicans’ Cowardly Excuses for Not Protecting Marriage Equality

Democrats have put a series of bills on the House floor that would protect Americans’ access to abortion and contraception, ability to cross state lines to obtain an abortion, and marriage equality. Republicans have voted overwhelmingly against all of them, with the most Republican defections coming on the bill to protect marriage equality. That split is an opportunity to protect one of the essential rights the conservative movement will continue urging their comrades on the Supreme Court to repeal.

Republican senators such as Marco Rubio and Ben Sasse, as well as conservative outlets such as , have insisted that is unnecessary because there is no case currently on its way to the Supreme Court that has the potential to overturn , the decision that recognized the right of same-sex couples to marry. Rubio against the bill because it was a “waste of our time on a non-issue.” Sasse that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was “trying to divide America with culture wars. I think it’s just the same bullshit. She’s not an adult.”